Gareth Cliff interviews Unathi Nkayi on 'UnCancelled with Gareth Cliff'
In a sit down with fellow broadcaster Gareth Cliff in a recently launched show called UnCancelled With Gareth Cliff, Unathi Nkayi spoke candidly about the main reasons she recently made headlines.
Nkayi’s most recent troubles began when she was involved in a public spat with her former Kaya FM colleague, Sizwe Dhlomo.
Speaking about her plans to launch a podcast with her father, she shared a few lessons he taught her, including: “pay your mortgage ahead and pay your lights ahead.”
She added that had she not implemented these lessons, she may have lost her home in the aftermath of her labour dispute with Kaya FM.
“If I had not paid my mortgage ahead from 2007, my house would have been taken last year from what Kaya did to me, my house would have been gone.”
She added that for the past year, she has not needed to pay her bond because of her habit of paying ahead.
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Nkayi said the Kaya debacle did such reputational damage to her that work opportunities dried up, leaving her with little to no income. She briefly got a job shortly thereafter but has recently hung up her mic at the community radio station, Star 91.9 FM, where she and Justin Toerien have been co-hosting All Star Drive for the past year.
Leading into his questions about the Kaya FM debacle, Cliff reminded the live audience and viewers of the interview of his own issues with the powers that be at Idols whom he said tried to fire him.
That led to a court dispute that Cliff won before bowing out of the show, making way for other judges.
“So you’re suing the pants off of Kaya?” asked Cliff.
“So I started litigation against Kaya beginning of Feb…” she began before someone in the audience threw her off by reacting with a “Wow.”
Nkayi then revisited the events leading up to her dismissal.
She recalled how she found out she had been fired while working on music with Prince Kaybee during a ten-day getaway. The pair had booked a house to work from, along with a group of instrumentalists, when she not only got the call but saw the public statement issued by the radio station just minutes after she had been informed about her dismissal.
Nkayi says she first told her mom what happened and that it was her mother who initially advised her to take legal action against her former employer when she had no intention of doing so at first.
She followed that conversation up with a call to her father, who called the family lawyer to advise her on her options.
Nkayi also touched on the fact that she is from a family of generations of spiritual healers and shared this to illustrate the approach her family took in their legal action.
She said her father told her to wait a year as he knew “they” would turn on each other and that she could institute her legal process once that happened.
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Nkayi revealed that the process of arbitration is costing her six figures and that she had to save to fund the process.
“This past Friday, the Kaya attorney sent my attorneys an email requesting a copy of my employment contract and my mother said ‘yoooo mntanam!’ and my father said ‘jaaa uba fumene!’”
Speaking about her dating life, she said she doesn’t date anymore because “the younger ones are too enthusiastic, the older ones are too lethargic, they don’t have energy for me… My age group is too needy and childish. 40-somethings, you know yourselves, I’m not trying to raise another n***ah.”
“There’s nothing more unattractive than a man wanting you to raise him and then expecting you to f**k him!” she added.
“Let’s see them put this on TV where Idols was. Let them get some ratings for the first time in ages,” quipped Cliff.
Unathi Nkayi also confirmed that she and her ex-husband Thomas Msengana are in a good place, adding that he is her greatest love and that their love had evolved and grown in a way that did not require them to be romantically involved.
They relate to each other as friends and co-parents more than anything.
“You know what T and I did? We fortified ourselves away from everything and everyone so that whatever happened in front of the media, we knew who we are…”
She then revealed that when they got divorced, Gareth and Randall Abrahams did not “choose sides” while Somizi did and talked “smack” about her on his reality show.
Nkayi then explained that their friendship had ended long before she confirmed it online due to things that happened between them behind the scenes.
“The candid engagements South Africans used to have on talk radio and TV chat shows seem to be a thing of the past. Cancel culture has made people afraid to air their views and, in a country known for its unfettered dialogues on just about every subject, that’s a pretty sad state of affairs,” reads an opening statement about Cliff’s new show.
Noting that “there are not enough places to keep diverse audiences engaged and included in discourse that affects our lives,” Cliff has now expanded this offering to include a monthly live event with an audience.
The event series is aimed at “raising the bar when it comes to thought-provoking content.”
The show that the monthly event is centred around is co-produced by award-winning comedian and writer, Eugene Khoza.
Together, the pair hope that the new current affairs and entertainment series will open the floodgates on pent-up views about life without electricity to hilarious human behaviour.
“It’s about the most topical issues in South Africa and around the world and to get people talking! We want to encourage progressive thinking and spark debate; whether they agree or disagree!” commented Cliff.
“It’ll follow a similar format to the Joe Rogan Experience and Real Time with Bill Maher,” said Khoza, who opened the first show on 15 February.
“We’ll bring our own unique flavour to it, of course, but the objective will be to ask, engage and inspire thought-provoking exchanges.”
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